Research

Hormonal

Weight loss efficacy from primary care interventions attenuates over time, with an average regain of 0.53 kg per 6 months, even when the intervention continues.

Don't expect your weight loss to stay perfectly static. Even with ongoing treatment, you may regain about 0.5 kg every 6 months. This is normal. To maintain your loss, you likely need to stay on your treatment plan (including medication if used) long-term, rather than treating it as a short-term fix.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
In all interventions, efficacy declined with time (reduction in weight loss by 0.53 kg per 6 months, 95% CI: 0.04–1.0 kg).
Leigh Perreault et al. · Frontiers in Medicine · 2023

Why this rating

Derived from the same meta-analysis with heterogeneity, but the trend is statistically significant (p=0.04).

Source

A closer look at weight loss interventions in primary care: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Leigh Perreault et al. · Frontiers in Medicine · 2023

DOI 10.3389/fmed.2023.1204849

Meta-analysis · 7 studiesCited 6×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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